memories space time/time: within a golden rectangle

Quote by John A. Wheeler, Theoretical Physicist

Within a Golden Rectangle: Moon Snail Shell (spinning) is a series of twenty-four sculptures, composed of shells spinning while mounted on motors and photographed by Sandrow. Conceived following Sandrow’s solo exhibition, water life (July - October 1998) at the Whitney Museum, at Philip Morris, with Curator Eugenie Tsai. The photographic prints and the paper boxes that held the shells were in the proportion of the Golden Rectangle; the Greek ideal of harmonious composition from which the logarithmic spiral, such as the moon snail shell, is drawn.

While walking on the Atlantic Ocean beach at the Mecox Inlet, I encountered by chance thousands of beached Moon Snail Shells whose bodies inside were dead or dying. I wanted to make a story of their life on the eroding shoreline. In response, I mounted them

Hope Sandrow, 1998

Above: Moon Snail Shell mounted in response. Moon Snail Shell, Brass Cast pen casings, phonograph motor, aluminum can, cam motor on stretched canvas

Detail, Within a Golden Rectangle: 9,997

Chance Encounter of Moon Snail Shells washed ashore at Mecox Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean, Watermill, NY.

From the exhibition, water life, The Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris (Altria), 1998.

Of the many thousands of shells, over six months’ time, Sandrow carefully extricated 9,997 of the dead bodies, washed, oiled, hand numbered, and sorted the shells by size and color in paper boxes for the exhibition, water life. Twenty-four, (inspired by Duchamp’s Roto Reliefs-see below) were mounted, and photographed spinning for this series, Within a Golden Rectangle: Moon Snail Shell (spinning). Note 1

Moral principles are sometimes at stake in the strange and uncanny objects we call art. In Hope Sandrow’s case, this moral contingency is worn on the sleeve of the medium, of the process, of the subject, and, of the artist. Like that of other obviously moral artists (Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Krystof Wodiczko, among others), Sandrow’s understanding of art as a site for a change of consciousness is always close to the surface. But, and it is an important but, Sandrow is not attempting to produce a critical subject, which is the aim of much political and activist art, as much as she is trying to produce an undecidable subject. By this, I mean that her artistic and social oscillation from the personal to the political, the mantra of feminist and, now, postmodern art in general, is colored by a poetics of materials and process which is, finally, benevolent rather than extreme or sensational.

— Bruce Ferguson, excerpt from Spirit Matters: Hope Sandrow: water life,

The Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, 1998

l to r; Marcel Duchamp and Hans Richter with Rotoreliefs (1947)

The Little Review; collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art.

above: Franklin Institute, Fels Planetarium

Sandrow designed and assembled a spinning mechanism with motors, casings and parts purchased from Canal Street stores.

Note 1: “It was Duchamp himself who ensured that the majority of his work stayed together in one institution. He assisted his primary patrons, collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg, in negotiating the 1950 gift of their distinguished collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “

water life, The Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris (Altria), 1998. Moon snails, and paper boxes, in the proportion of a golden rectangle.

“In water life, the combination of photographs and shells evokes Mecox Bay, a site of harmonious reconciliation between people and nature. Despite the apparent contradiction between the world of nature represented in Sandrow’s art and the overtly urban environment of the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris, the artist draws connections between the two realms. Reading about the history of midtown Manhattan, she discovered that the area was once a marshy meadowland, with rocky bluffs and streams. A river ran northwest from Kips Bay past where the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris currently stands. There was, moreover, an abundance of shellfish in the area. A third element of the installation, the sound of running water, audible in some parts of the gallery, evokes this river that might still run through the depths beneath the Museum. With this recording, Sandrow invites us to imagine what Manhattan was like in the past, when its flora and fauna resembled that of present-day Mecox Bay. The photographs and the shells in water life evoke not merely a place of extraordinary beauty in the natural world, but a place of personal significance, where Sandrow can be born anew, whole and unbroken.”

— Eugenie Tsai, excerpt from Hope Sandrow: water life

Within a Golden Rectangle: Moon Snail Shell I (spinning)